Full Hearts - 2

It looks as though Friday Night Lights, which because of the Writers' Strike came to a standstill with episode 15 of Season 2, may survive and flourish after all, with the possibility of a Season 3. San Diego media blogger Kristin Dos Santos writes that

Inside sources confirm to me that NBC Universal (the studio that makes FNL) is currently talking to various networks about the idea of sharing the show's third season among more than one channel in an effort to save the series from cancellation and broaden its audience.

Those channels in discussion include the CW, TNT, DirecTV and a place called Comcast Entertainment Group, which, hmmm, sounds familiar because, oh yeah, they sign my checks. Both E! and G4 fall under the Comcast umbrella.

This would be good news, as FNL is probably one of the most inventive American TV series to have aired in the past decade, and has the potential to become a hit worldwide. It certainly deserves to.

See also: Full Hearts

Watching Russia

Via AP:

...U.S. diplomat Nicholas Burns called on Serbia's main ally Russia to repudiate a suggestion by one of its officials [Dmitry Rogozin] that it may need to use military force to earn respect after the U.S. and other countries recognized the independence of Kosovo, which is mainly ethnic Albanian, over strong Serb and Russian protests.

"We strongly advise Russia to be more responsible in its public comments toward Kosovo," Burns said, responding to questions in an online written discussion. "Russia is isolated this week — very few countries are supporting its position."

Serbs Attack US Embassy - 3

Via CNN:

Richard Holbrooke, a former negotiator in the Balkans under President Clinton, said: "The fact that (independence has) not happened as peacefully as people had hoped is the direct result of the incitement to violence by extremist elements in Belgrade, implicitly and privately supported by the Russians."

Serbs Attack US Embassy - 2

From RFE/RL:

As night fell, parts of the crowd broke away and marched to the U.S. Embassy. Black smoke and flames were soon billowing out a front window.

The same group also vandalized the neighboring Croatian Embassy, a McDonald’s restaurant, and several other stores. Elsewhere in the city, police beat back crowds who tried to attack the Turkish and British embassies.

Television images showed hundreds of people surging through the streets as anti-riot police arrived and fired tear gas canisters as crowd control.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns had telephoned Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic to convey the message that they had not adequately protected the U.S. Embassy.

------

On February 17 and 18, crowds threw stones at the U.S. and Turkish embassies in Belgrade and damaged the mission of Slovenia, which currently heads the rotating EU Presidency.

Infrastructure Minister Velimir Ilic, who heads the New Serbia party, said on February 20 that the action was "just Serbian youth expressing their protest" over the "dismembering of Serbia," adding that such incidents are part of "democracy."

Serbs Attack US Embassy

Via the BBC:

Several hundred protesters have attacked and broken into the US embassy in the Serbian capital Belgrade, setting fire to part of it.

The embassy was closed and unprotected at the time. Reports say the Croatian and UK embassies were also attacked.

Russophone Reactions

At Global Voices Online, Veronica Khokhlova has posted a translation of Russophone reactions to Kosovo's declaration of independence.

The Politics of Precedent - 3

In the Washington Post, Anne Applebaum reminds her readers that the wars of Yugoslavia actually began in Kosovo - in the late 1980s, when Milosevic deprived the province of its autonomy, installed a new police force, and by 1990 had more or less destroyed Kosovo's civic, cultural and political life. Then, by backing Serbian minorities across the former Yugoslavia, Milosevic inspired the creation of similiar campaigns of terror, intimidation and murder by local Serb militias:

...the result of this activity -- discrimination, ethnic cleansing, warfare -- was a complete disaster for Serbia. The Serbian economy went down the tubes; the Serb dominance of ex-Yugoslavia evaporated; Belgrade, the Serb capital, was bombed. Now Serbia looks set to be dismembered as well: Some European countries and the United States have recognized Kosovo's independence, something that wouldn't have happened two decades ago. Milosevic the super-nationalist -- the would-be leader of a revived, powerful, successful Serbia -- damaged no country nearly so much as he damaged Serbia itself.

Keep that lesson in mind over the next few months as others in Europe -- and possibly elsewhere -- attempt to use the Kosovo example as a precedent. After all, if the Albanians can be independent from Serbia, the Abkhazians and South Ossetians would like to be independent from Georgia, the Basques and the Catalonians don't see why they shouldn't be independent from Spain, and who knows what could happen in Cyprus.

In some of these cases, there are other, larger neighbors that might be interested in facilitating the split, just as Serbia was keen to encourage ethnic Serbs in Bosnia or Croatia. Most notably, and most notoriously, the Russians have made ominous noises and dropped dark hints about those Georgian separatist groups, and one can certainly see their logic. What a perfect way to take revenge on those difficult, NATO-loving Georgians: Encourage Georgia's ethnic minorities to launch civil war. Besides, the timing could hardly be better. In the waning days of the Bush administration, is Abkhazia anybody's central concern? During the most interesting U.S. presidential campaign in decades, is anyone going to spare a thought for South Ossetia?

Except that if Abkhazia and South Ossetia were to secede, and civil war in Georgia were to follow, the Russians would then have a failed state on their borders. And, as we know from Yugoslavia, the Middle East and Africa, ethnic and religious civil wars have a nasty way of spreading to their neighbors. Chaos in Georgia might be in the short-term interest of a small group of Putinites, desperate to raise the specter of warfare, annoy the West, and cling to power (much like Milosevic, once upon a time), but it is most definitely not in the long-term interest of Russia.

Russia's policy toward these would-be separatists over the next few weeks will therefore reveal a great deal about the mentality of Russia's ruling clan. If the denizens of the Kremlin have a shred of concern about their compatriots' future well-being, they'll shut up and try to calm everyone down. If not -- well, I hope they remember that the risks of the law of unintended consequences apply to them, too.

The Politics of Precedent - 2

Vladimir Socor takes a more skeptical view of Russia's reaction to Kosovar independence, and considers that Russia's bluff has been called on the issue:

Moscow’s threat to use Kosova’s secession as a “precedent” or “model” for resolving post-Soviet conflicts was never a credible threat, unless the Kremlin was bent on incurring severe damage and no gain to its policies on a wide range of interests: Relations with the West, with members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (far beyond those immediately affected by secessions) and with international organizations, as well as Russia’s own security situation in the North Caucasus would have been jeopardized.

Those concerned about Russian exploitation of a Kosova “precedent” overlooked the fact that Moscow remains more than content to exploit the existing, “frozen” situation in the unresolved conflicts. This it can continue doing effectively and at low cost to itself, as long as the West does not prioritize the resolution of the post-Soviet conflicts.

Indications are now multiplying that Moscow has blinked on its most specific threat: that to “recognize the independence” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Russia had singled out these two Georgian territories as prime candidates for “recognition.” This line of attack contradicted Moscow’s own claim that resolution of all secessionist conflicts in Europe and the world must follow a common “model” or “single standard.” Such selectivity about Abkhazia and South Ossetia reflected Moscow’s special enmity toward Georgia, the immediate territorial proximity (whereas Karabakh and Transnistria are not contiguous to Russia), and the Russian policy of allowing Armenia de facto a free hand in Karabakh, while Moscow claims de facto a free hand in the two Georgian territories.

Largely for those reasons, Moscow handed out Russian citizenship en masse in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, so as to claim a right of intrusive protection there, including military presence. At the same time it left the issues of citizenship and security protection in Karabakh up to Armenia. And it has been negotiating with Moldova since 2006 regarding a settlement that would leave Transnistria within Moldova, in return for a certain measure of Russian political and military oversight over a Moldovan state “reunified” in that way.

These highly differentiated, expediency-based approaches nullified from the outset Russia’s argument about a “Kosovo precedent” with general applicability. Had it applied such a “precedent” unilaterally in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the Kremlin would have been exposed as singularizing Georgia and targeting it for a wanton act of aggression. With Russian troops and Russian-appointed local leaders already deployed in those two enclaves, any Russian “recognition” would have been seen worldwide as open military occupation and annexation. Moscow did not need to risk such a scenario, since the existing situation suits Russian purposes well.

As Kosova’s declaration of independence and Western recognition drew near, Moscow must have concluded that its threats against Georgia were unusable threats. Consequently, Moscow seems to be seeking a face-saving exit from a political impasse into which it has driven itself. Suddenly the Kremlin is downplaying its all-too-recent, dire warnings.

The Exception

Commenting on the news of Fidel Castro's resignation, Carl Bildt points out:

I dag är Kuba det enda landet i den västra hemisfären som saknar en folkvald regering. I stället tyngs det av ett föråldrat och förstelnat kommunistiskt styre.

Today Cuba is the only country in the western hemisphere which lacks a popularly elected government. Instead it is weighed down by an obsolete and fossilized Communist regime.

The Politics of Precedent

RFE/RL's Brian Whitmore, on the wider repercussions of Kosovo's declaration of independence:

The Chechen situation places Moscow uncomfortably between two contradictory sentiments. While it has done little to dampen separatist sentiments in territories affecting its neighbors, it has staunchly rejected the Kosovo model for its own breakaway conflicts like that in Chechnya.

Indeed, analysts have pointed out, the Kremlin is entering perilous and unpredictable territory by raising the issue of a Kosovo precedent. For this reason, [Sabine]Freizer says she does not expect Moscow to press the issue very hard.

"Russia is taking a risk by saying that Kosovo is now a case that is going to set a precedent in other parts of the former Soviet space," Freizer says. "They risk having this go beyond Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transdniester -- and perhaps even Nagorno-Karabakh -- to their own territory of the Russian Federation, to Chechnya or other parts of the North Caucasus."

Officials of other CIS states with breakaway conflicts are, not surprisingly, far from enthusiastic about the Kosovo declaration.

In Georgia, authorities have rejected any comparison between its breakaway enclaves and Kosovo, adding that they have no plans to recognize the former Serbian territory.

"Georgia is not planning to assume any position in relation to Kosovo, nor is it going to recognize it," Temur Iakobashvili, Georgia's state minister for reintegration, tells RFE/RL's Georgian Service.

"This process has evolved independently from us, and it's important that we stop looking for parallels between Kosovo and conflicts that exist in Georgia. Such parallels don't exist, and the sooner we forget the word 'Kosovo' the better it will be for us, as well as for the Abkhaz and the Russians," Iakobashvili adds. "Georgia is not going to recognize Kosovo -- this is not in our interests -- just like I think Russia is not going to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia."

Then there is Azerbaijan, which has spent a decade-and-a-half engaged in a protracted conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic-Armenian enclave located within Azerbaijani territory that functions as a de facto independent republic with its own provisional government.

Baku fears Yerevan may use the Kosovo precedent during talks on Karabakh to upset the ongoing peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia. To that end, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Khazar Ibrahim said Baku will not recognize Kosovo, calling Pristina's move "against the principles of international law and illegal."

To the Caucasus via Kosovo

A Chechenpress op-ed article says that

The Russian authorities have openly stated that they will annex the occupied Georgian territories following the recognition of Kosovo’s independence. The Kremlin has not managed to restrain itself until the recognition of Kosovo’ s independence has been completed and the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced his country’s plans after the meeting with his puppets nicknamed ‘the President of Abkhazia’ and ‘the President of South Ossetia’.

Kosovo declares independence

CNN notes that

Russia -- Serbia's historic ally -- has remained opposed to Kosovo's independence. Russia, which has fought two wars against separatist rebels in its southwestern republic of Chechnya, has said that U.S. and European support for Kosovo's independence could lead to an "uncontrollable crisis" in the Balkans.

NATO Plans

United States Ambassador to Georgia John Tefft is interviewed by RFE/RL [excerpt]:

Another critical April engagement is the NATO summit in Bucharest. Georgia,like Ukraine, had been hoping to earn a boost in its admission bid with a Membership Action Plan -- a goal that may have been derailed by the November crisis.

Tefft says there has been "no change" in U.S. support for Georgia getting a plan.

"I don't know as we speak what will happen at the Bucharest summit in April. There are lots of discussions going on, many of them took place this weekend in Munich at the [February 9-10] security conference there. We'll just have to see," he says. "But getting back and firmly on the democratic path is really a critical part of Georgia's establishing that it is in fact a good candidate to be a member of NATO and to contribute to NATO."

All over for Rowan - II

Anne Applebaum, writing in the Washington Post:

Many explanations for the archbishop's statements have already been proffered: the weakness of the Church of England, the paganism of the British, the feebleness of Williams's intellect, the decline of the West. At base, though, his beliefs are merely an elaborate, intellectualized version of a commonly held, and deeply offensive, Western prejudice: Alone among all of the world's many religious groups, Muslims living in Western countries cannot be expected to conform to Western law -- or perhaps do not deserve to be treated as legal equals of their non-Muslim neighbors.

Every time police shrug their shoulders when a Muslim woman complains that she has been forced to marry against her will, every time a Western doctor tries not to notice the female circumcisions being carried out in his hospital, they are acting in the spirit of the archbishop of Canterbury. So is the social worker who dismisses the plight of an illiterate, house-bound woman, removed from her village and sent across the world to marry a man she has never met, on the grounds that her religion prohibits interference. That's why -- if there is to be war between the British tabloids and the archbishop -- I'm on the side of the Sun.

Patarkatsishvili Dead

Russian media are reporting that Badri Patarkatsishvili has died suddenly in London, and that British police are investigating the incident - though most sources indicate the cause of death as a heart attack. The Georgian's death has been confirmed by Boris Berezovsky.

The BBC has a report here.

From the Guardian:

His death has prompted speculation about whether or not a force more sinister than nature played a part in his heart attack.

In December, Patarkatsishvili claimed he had obtained a 45-minute audiotape recording of an official in the Georgian interior ministry asking a Chechen warlord to murder him while he was in Britain or Israel, where he also had a home. Transcripts were published in the Sunday Times.

"I believe they want to kill me," he said. Patarkatsishvili hired Lord Goldsmith - who said he took the threat "very seriously" - to represent him.

A top Georgian analyst said it was highly unlikely Georgia's government would have murdered Patarkatsishvili, despite the fact he was an outspoken critic of the regime.

The government led by Mikhail Saakashvili did not have the capability to pull off an assassination in Britain, Zaza Gachechiladze, editor in chief of the Georgian Messenger, told the Guardian.

"I don't think he was killed by anybody in Georgia. Technically, we don't have that much possibilities. We don't have a very much sophisticated intelligence service," Gachechiladze said.

And the Telegraph notes that

While the investigation into the death of Mr Patarkatsishvili - a sworn enemy of Russian President Vladimir Putin - remains at an early stage, even speculation that the Russia state could be involved will fan diplomatic flames.

Russian bomber buzzes US carrier

CNN reports on how a Russian bomber twice flew about 2,000 feet over the deck of the USS Nimitz in the Western Pacific at the weekend.

Four turboprop Tupolev-95 Bear bombers took off from Ukrainka air base, in Russia's Far East, in the middle of the night, Japanese officials told The Associated Press, adding that one of the jets violated Japanese airspace.

63

It's my birthday today. I'm 63.

Medical Blackmail

Robert Amsterdam writes about the fate of the former Executive Vice President of Yukos, who is dying from HIV AIDS in a Russian jail cell:

Vasily Alexanyan (Aleksanyan, Alexanian) is dying. This is a fact. He is dying because he has refused the offers for medical treatment from the prosecutors in exchange for false testimony against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos. I cannot overstate the importance of this tragedy, which explains more about the injustice, lack of rule of law, and ruthless persecution of these political prisoners than any argument I can put forth. What other government uses medical blackmail to create legal cover for their crimes?

All over for Rowan

Damian Thompson, in the Telegraph:

Anglicans in parts of Nigeria live under what is, in effect, totalitarian Sharia. It goes without saying Williams does not defend the stoning of adulterous women and other charming Islamic practices. But, in his interview with the BBC, his condemnation of "bad" Sharia is deeply buried in acres of Vichyite waffle about the need to see Sharia "case by case within an overall framework of the principles laid down in the Koran and the Hadith".

For the Archbishop of Canterbury to propose an extension of British Sharia in the same week that we learned of the extent to which the Sharia authorities cover up "honour crimes" reveals a degree of ineptitude that even George Carey never managed.

And, talking of George, watch this space. Lord Carey of Clifton is no fan of his successor, but a very big fan of African Anglicans persecuted by Sharia. I would be very surprised if he can resist intervening in this dispute.

Anyway, I reckon it's all over for Rowan.

Archbishop's Public Blunder

Britain's Archbishop of Canterbury has finally put his foot in it in a momentous way - with a truly outrageous statement. Via the BBC:

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK "seems unavoidable".

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to the fact" that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Hat tip: Leopoldo

The Currency of Violence

In the Washington Post, Nora Boustany writes about the growing spread of Islamist ideology in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, profiling the Chechen researcher, journalist and sociologist Ousam Baysaev:

In his lecture, Baysaev showed a slide of a wall to illustrate the shift from secular to Islamic influence within the separatist movement. One slogan that had been sprayed on the wall graffiti-style read: "Freedom or Death." Beneath it was a more recent one declaring: "Chechnya is the Province of Allah."

"They perceive themselves as having no outlet," Baysaev said of the rebels, adding that they would probably "take the fight to a broader area" that would include Ingushetia, Dagestan and other nearby republics.

A Bang, Not A Whimper

Jeff Nyquist, on how The Cold War Never Ended (excerpt):

By some counts, Russia has the best intelligence service in the world. A cheap trick of latter-day prognostication is to watch Russian moves with an eye to what they know. Prior to 9/11 the Russian parliament staged hearings in which testimony was presented about an imminent attack on America by “shadow forces.” The dollar was expected to crash. The Russian people were encouraged to trade their dollars for gold. To this end, gold was made legal tender in Russia. Anyone watching these hearings, knowing the prescience of Russian intelligence, would conclude that something “very nasty” was coming against America. And sure enough, 9/11 proved the point. Russian spies go everywhere. They look into everything.

It is worth noting that Russian economic moves have been telltale since 1998. At the time, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, Russia was cooperating with the West. But there were disturbing cracks in the friendly façade. A defector warned that Russia had a secret intelligence “alliance” with China. Even more disturbing, Russia was still working on a super-plague biological weapon, planning to build new missiles, cheating on other arms agreements. Russia was refurbishing underground nuclear bunkers and nuclear-proof cities. Why were these preparations taking place in the midst of peace, under the leadership of Boris Yeltsin?

Long ago Russian strategists predicted the West would suffer a severe economic crisis. As far back as the 1950s Russian strategists talked of a “forty-year” strategy and more, with strategic preparations in the clandestine, criminal, economic and political spheres. Though Communist ideology is supposed to be dead, Western analysts shouldn’t underestimate the ongoing influence of Marxist ideas. Having seen the world through the lens of Marxism-Leninism, Russian and Chinese leaders didn’t become overnight disciples of John Locke or Adam Smith. The old battle line remains between rich nations and poor nations, between capitalism and socialism. As a self-conceived champion of the poor nations, the Marxist always anticipates a global capitalist meltdown that will bring about a new balance of power (in favor of a Marxist bloc of countries). This is part wishful thinking, part realistic thinking. History teaches that financial crashes periodically occur. If you are plotting to overthrow a global social system, it is logical to strike when that system has suffered an upset. In terms of playing to this expectation, the Chinese have concentrated on trade while the Russians have concentrated on monopolizing raw materials (oil, natural gas and minerals).

Hat tip: Marko

Enemy Street

Prague Watchdog's Umalt Chadayev, on Grozny's Moscow-backed city administration's plan to rename a Grozny street.

King: Putin masterminded 1999 apartment bombings

From the Sunday Telegraph:

...Sir David King, who as the Government's Chief Scientist played a key role in the investigation into Litvinenko's murder, has accused the Russian president of masterminding the murder of nearly 300 of his own people in the Moscow apartment bombings in 1999, which Putin blamed on Chechen terrorists.

"I can tell you that Putin was responsible for the bombings," Sir David claimed to Mandrake at the Morgan Stanley Great Britons Awards. "I've seen the evidence. There is no way that Putin would have won the election if it wasn't for the bombings. Before them he was getting 10 per cent approval ratings. After, they shot up to 80 per cent."

Russia granted refugee status to Milosevices

Via the BBC:

Russia granted refugee status to the wife and son of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, the country's immigration service has admitted.

The two were given the status in March 2005, Russian officials said.

Travel Ban

The NYT's Michael Schwirtz, on how Estonia has struck back at the Kremlin youth group Nashi by placing the organization's members on a European Union travel blacklist,

preventing them from traveling not only to Estonia but also, because of its recent entry into the European Union border-free zone, to most of Europe as well.

Missing Reference

From last night's State of the Union address:

We trust that people, when given the chance, will choose a future of freedom and peace. In the last seven years, we have witnessed stirring moments in the history of liberty. We've seen citizens in Georgia and Ukraine stand up for their right to free and fair elections. We've seen people in Lebanon take to the streets to demand their independence. We've seen Afghans emerge from the tyranny of the Taliban and choose a new president and a new parliament. We've seen jubilant Iraqis holding up ink-stained fingers and celebrating their freedom. These images of liberty have inspired us.

The people of the Russian Federation, however, seem to be less keen on a future of freedom and peace. This is something the President omitted from his speech - including all reference to Russia and things Russian.

Cyber assault conviction

The BBC notes that the first conviction in connection with the wave of cyber-attacks which hit Estonia last spring has been made in an Estonian court.

Boomerang

Gyldendal have published Danish poet Pia Tafdrup's latest collection - Boomerang, a series of 101 haiku poems that originated in a visit the poet made to Japan a few years ago.

The trees are there
so that everyone will look up,
the boy says loudly.

Bullies with something to hide

Culture and civil society are places to nurture shared values - that is especially important during times of diplomatic strain. Closing British Council offices doesn't strengthen Moscow's insistence that it played no role in the Litvinenko assassination. All it does is make Putin and the Kremlin look like bullies - with something to hide.

International Herald Tribune editorial, January 21

The Unravelling of Russia's Europe Policy

By Peter Zeihan

via Stratfor

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his anointed successor, Dmitri Medvedev, were in Bulgaria on Jan. 17. The point of the trip was to put the crowning touch on a Russian effort to hook Europe into Moscow’s energy orbit. After a touch of bitter rhetoric about how Russia and Bulgaria were “doomed to be partners,” Putin agreed to grant equal rights to the South Stream natural gas pipeline Moscow hopes to lay through Bulgaria. Yet the tension of the meeting and the concessions that Putin had to make simply to get permission are symptomatic of a broad unraveling of Russian foreign policy toward Europe.

The Russian Scheme

Russia often has had a love-hate relationship with Europe. Dating back to the time of the czars, Moscow has had to aim for a mix of economic integration and military intimidation to make its voice heard. In the aftermath of the Cold War and the degradation of the Red Army, the military intimidation factor has largely fallen away, leaving economics as the primary method of impacting Europe. In this, Russia has forces at its disposal every bit as useful as Soviet tank divisions. Cold War-era infrastructure provides the 27-member European Union with roughly one-quarter of the natural gas and oil it consumes. Such dependence might not be sufficient to force European deference, but it certainly guarantees that Europe will hear Russia out.

Natural gas is unique among the various industrial and energy commodities. The combination of its gaseous nature and the sheer bulk that is required to power large economies (the European Union uses more than half a trillion cubic meters of the stuff a year) means that it can only be efficiently transported via pipeline. While oil and coal and alumina and wheat and platinum can all be loaded into trucks, rail cars and tankers — allowing any producer to supply any consumer — natural gas can travel only along existing pipeline networks. Canada therefore only supplies the United States and Russia only supplies former Soviet republics, Turkey and Europe. This contained relationship gives Russia leverage in a way that its mineral and oil wealth do not. And so it is here that the Europeans have tried — with some success — to slice through the ties that bind.

Putin has sought to strengthen this energy leverage via two pipeline projects in particular. The two natural gas lines — Nord Stream, which would run under the Baltic Sea from St. Petersburg to Germany; and the aforementioned South Stream, which would run under the Black Sea from near Novorossiysk to Bulgaria — would increase the European dependency on Russian natural gas from 25 percent to 35 percent of its total consumption.

Economically, neither of these projects makes sense. Building long underwater pipelines to Europe — a region with which the former Soviet Union shares a land connection — is simply asinine; landlines typically cost less than a third of their underwater equivalents. Additionally, Nord Stream would be the world’s longest underwater natural gas pipeline and South Stream the deepest.

But the Russians did not plan these projects with profitability in mind — having tripled their natural gas export prices since 2000, they have profit aplenty. Instead, they are thinking of the Americans. The Kremlin’s Cold War mantra has long been that if the Europeans can be neutralized, then American influence can be purged from Europe. Ergo, American presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan have opposed (explicitly or not) any expansion of trade and energy links between Europe and Russia. And there also is the minor detail of Russia hating to involve transit states such as Belarus and Ukraine that are able to siphon off Russian energy en route to hard-currency-paying Europeans.

Given the political nature of these projects, then, the numbers have always been a touch wacky. The Russians have underestimated the costs of both of the natural gas lines to a humorous degree (likely by a factor of four or more), they lack the technological ability to build the lines themselves and they have insisted that the Europeans foot the bills. Specifically they expect ENI to pay for South Stream, and BASF, Gasunie and E.On to cover Nord Stream. Topping it off, they expect themselves — not the countries on which the pipes will lie or the companies that finance and build them — to own the projects when they are completed.

The European Response

The Europeans certainly exchanged some worried looks when these projects were proposed and Russia started assembling consortia to work on them. But in January 2006 an event happened that galvanized European action to wean the Continent off of Russian energy. A natural gas pricing dispute with Ukraine resulted in a brief suspension of deliveries to Europe (Russian natural gas deliveries to Europe currently transit Ukraine and Belarus). Russia attempted to leverage this energy crisis to force the Europeans to back Russian policy in Ukraine. Specifically, Moscow wanted Europe to repudiate Ukraine’s Orange Revolution against Russia’s preferred Ukrainian government and recognize Russian suzerainty in the former Soviet Union.

The strategy backfired and sparked intense interest across Europe in diversifying sources of petroleum and reducing total demand. European states and firms launched alternative supply lines, rafts of terminals were built to import natural gas shipped by tanker in more expensive liquefied form, a new fleet of nuclear reactors were commissioned, and the European Union adopted ambitious alternative energy and conservation programs (which incidentally dovetailed nicely with Europe’s anti-greenhouse-gas plans). The formal European goal is now to reduce total energy consumption by 20 percent — with 20 percent of the remaining total coming from alternative sources — by 2020. The EU states are still squabbling over who needs to bear what specific burdens, but there is no disagreement as to the goal — or the reasons it exists in the first place.

There are two questions remaining.

The Question of Time

First, how long will it be until the Russians realize that their energy tool is no longer sharp? The answer is, longer than you might think.

The Russians have persevered in their pursuit of these projects despite increasingly obvious signs that the Europeans not only are not interested in the projects, they are not interested in the Russians. In part it is because, if Moscow’s plan were realized, it would be a very good plan indeed, as it would harness Europe irrevocably to Russia.

But mostly the lack of realization is because of Russia’s historical blind spot. Russia’s wide-open geography means that it has few barriers to invasion. Consequently, Russian history is one of occasional foreign occupation, which has resulted in a culture that mixes xenophobia, bitterness, persecution and a sense of entitlement in equal measure. This idea of “we have suffered so much so you should do what we say” — a sort of superiority complex based on an inferiority complex — clouds Russian strategic thinking and contributes to the seeming inability of the Kremlin to sense that the Chinese are stealing Central Asia from under the Russian nose.

It also explains why the Russians have not realized that the Europeans are moving away from them in as expeditious manner as feasible. The European reactions to Russian entreaties on these natural gas projects can best be summated as humoring the Russians. Few states want an out-and-out breach in their relations with Moscow, which could result in an actual and immediate energy cutoff before the Europeans are prepared to sever economic ties. So they have been taking advantage of Russia’s cultural blind spot while quietly developing alternatives.
This is doubly true for firms such as E.On and Gasunie, which supposedly are involved in consortia to build the projects. All are key purchasers of Russian energy exports and have found it easier to feign support than to be bluntly honest and so risk losing reliable deliveries of Russia natural gas. The one possible exception might be ENI, which is desperate for any source of natural gas to maintain its market position in Italy. But even here, it is far from clear that a single firm — even one as large as ENI — can shoulder realistically the massive burden of financing and building a project as questionable as South Stream by itself.

Years from now, Putin’s Jan. 17 trip to Bulgaria will likely be seen as the turning point in the European-Russia power balance, because that is when the humoring broke down. As Putin was en route to Bulgaria, Sofia insisted that, should South Stream come about, it will be Sofia — not Moscow — that holds a majority share in the portion on Bulgarian territory. A compromise — a 50-50 ownership split — was ultimately struck, simply because there is little Moscow can do to punish Bulgaria without deeply damaging its own interests. Bulgaria does not border Russia (or any former Soviet republic) and since it is a transit state for Russian natural gas to third countries, it cannot simply be cut off.

Bulgaria is hardly the bravest or most powerful of the EU states. It also is not among the crop that has done the most to diversify its energy consumption away from Russian sources. Consequently, it stands to reason that the nod-and-smile approach that has dominated European attitudes toward all things Russian is starting to crack. In the first 10 months of 2007 alone, total European demand for natural gas already dipped sharply, according to International Energy Agency data — reversing a 50-year upward trend.

Add in increased alternative supplies that are not merely prospective (such as the Nord and South Streams), but actually under construction — within three years Europe will have established alternatives for at least two-thirds of the natural gas Russia currently supplies — and Russia’s energy grip on Europe is slackening quickly.

In short, Europe is reorienting its entire energy sector to eliminate the “Russian factor.” This is allowing the Europeans to take a firmer line on Russia in other areas as well. For example, on Jan. 17 the European Union gave Ukraine the green light to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Until recently the Europeans had expected Ukraine under a pro-Russian government to join the WTO at the same time as Russia, so the Europeans played softball with the Russians in accession negotiations. But now that a pro-Western coalition has returned to power in Kiev, and since a pro-Western Ukraine will have the ability to block Russian accession on its own, the Europeans sense an opportunity to pry Ukraine out of Russia’s economic orbit and lash it into Europe’s. Consequently European negotiators have switched to hardball tactics on economic issues ranging from timber to transport, pushing back — yet again — serious efforts to bring Russia itself into the WTO.

Such isolation is far more damning than it sounds. According to the European Commission, if energy is shorn from Russian-European trade, then the new (much reduced) total value of that trade shrinks to an amount equal to that of the European Union’s trade with Iceland, a country with fewer than half a million people.

The Question of Response

That brings us to the second question. What will the Russians do about it?

For Russia, the challenge is not about the lost income — between rainy day funds and currency reserves, Moscow has socked away nearly $700 billion — but lost influence. Russia’s other exports, primarily metals, minerals and weapons, still fetch a pretty penny and put Russian fingers in pots the world over, but none grant it influence where it truly matters: in Europe.
Russia faces a near future in which the economic might of Europe will reinforce the geopolitical ambitions of the United States. Washington’s desire to whittle Russia back to a more manageable size is nothing new, but few realize that Brussels has its own ambitions. The Europeans would like to expand their economic reach into the bulk of the territory between the EU border and Moscow, as well as into the Caucasus. Europe does not see this as an imperialist venture, but simply as the natural order of things. The Russians, of course, see the world through a different lens, and European plans would be even more damaging in the long run to Russian interests than will American efforts, as they would make these border territories not only politically unreliable, but rather like the Baltics: firmly integrated into a rival system.

If economic tools no longer are relevant, Russia will be forced to fall back on political and military tactics, including:

Military intimidation of the Baltics and Finland.
Reunion with Belarus and a return of the Red Army to the Polish border.
Overt intervention in the Russian-speaking portions of Ukraine.
Active and public participation in Georgia’s secessionist conflicts, both to block European influence and to disrupt some of those alternate energy supplies.
Support for Europe’s various secessionist regions.

None of these options is clean and easy, and all are laden with consequences. Two of those consequences are critical enough to warrant mention here. First, any action from this list would rejuvenate NATO to the point that a Western military response, likely resulting in a new containment strategy, would be a foregone conclusion. Second, a renewed Russian confrontation with the West would certainly provide ample opportunity for China to make inroads into Central Asia and the Russian Far East, a region where Russia’s own intelligence services warn that Chinese squatters already might constitute the majority of the population. Yet with Russia’s economic toolkit impotent, such options are all that remain before the Kremlin.

Russia’s best hope is to recognize, before it is too late, that the tide is irrevocably turning. But Moscow faces one other complication in wrestling with the changing geopolitical reality — one that could critically delay an adjustment in strategies: itself.

Though Putin is undoubtedly the man in charge, he is not the only one with ambition. His inner circle is split roughly in half by a clan war between Vladislav Surkov and Sergei Ivanov. Both are loyal to Putin, but their battles have absorbed the majority of the state’s ability to deal with any issue. While the two overlords clash, the Europeans make ever-greater strides toward freeing themselves from dependence on Russian energy, steadily closing the window of opportunity for the Russians to adjust.

And when that window closes, Russia will face a world in which the United States no longer is consumed with all things Middle Eastern and the Europeans no longer are afraid of all things Russian.

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An offer that can be refused

After the British government denied that there were any plans to expel Russian diplomats in London, as some newspapers had claimed, the Kremlin began to try a different ploy, offering a proposal that the British Council's offices in Russia could reopen if the Britain resumed talks on counter-terrorism and entry visas, broken off in the wake of the Lugovoy/Litvinenko affair. Now Britain's foreign secretary has responded by refusing to link the matter of the closure of British Council offices in Russia with political issues that affect relations between the two countries. The British Council issue is not a political matter - solely a cultural one.

Half of UK Poles plan to return home

A report in the Telegraph notes that the fall in the value of the British pound is leading many UK Poles to plan a return to Poland:

Economists have said that with the pound falling from seven Polish zloties last summer to around 4.7 now, many of the estimated 600,000 Poles who have moved to Britain could see their saving power slashed by more than 35 per cent.

Sauce for the Gander - II

From the Mail on Sunday:

The Government is preparing to expel dozens of Russian spies operating in Britain as the diplomatic tensions with President Putin escalate.

MI5 has helped draw up a list of suspected agents, including at least 34 diplomats in the Russian embassy, who could be targeted in a mass expulsion.

Words of Warning

In the Daily Mail, Edward Lucas has some words of stark warning about what is happening to Russia now:

Russia still, outrageously, belongs to the G8 club of big rich Western countries and the Council of Europe, a talking shop that also guards the continent's human rights conventions.

But that should fool nobody.

Russia has explicitly abandoned Western values of political freedom, the rule of law and multilateral security, in favour of its own ideology, "Sovereign democracy".

That is a mixture of xenophobia, nationalism, autocracy, self-righteousness and nostalgia for the Soviet - and Stalinist - past.

Kennan on Russia

"At the bottom of the Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area.

"Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form, fragile and artificial in its psychological systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between the Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within... "

George Kennan, in a document sent to President Harry S. Truman in 1946

Sauce for the Gander

From the Financial Times:

But Mr Putin should beware. The British Council has operated in Russia for many years in an open and transparent manner. By contrast, there is plenty of covert financial and lobbying activity by Russian individuals inside the UK. If Mr Putin wants to start challenging the way foreign organisations operate inside his country, he had better realise that the British have plenty of questions of their own.

Via Robert Amsterdam

Russia's Reputation

The British Foreign Secretary has said that Russia's actions against the British Council call Russia's reputation into question. Though after the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the radiological poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, and the hounding of the British ambassador by Nashi thugs, one might have thought that Russia's reputation had already fallen to its lowest point ever:

UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband has described Russia's actions against the British Council as "reprehensible" and a "stain" on the country's reputation.

He said council staff had been grilled by Russian security services on issues including their family pets' health.

Such actions were "not worthy of a great country", he said, reading out EU and US messages of support for Britain.

The council has suspended work at two Russian offices, saying "intimidation" made it impossible to continue.

British Council Statement

Statement by Martin Davidson, British Council chief executive:

At the start of this week the Russian Government initiated a campaign of intimidation against our staff in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.

On Tuesday 15 January, the Russian State Security Services (FSB) summoned over 20 Russian staff to attend individual interviews.

Late that night 10 members of staff were visited at home by the Russian tax police and called to further interviews yesterday.

The interviews had little to do with their work and were clearly aimed at exerting undue pressure on innocent individuals.

Our paramount consideration is the wellbeing of our staff and I feel we cannot continue our work without significant risk to them.

The Russian authorities have made it impossible for us to operate in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg so I have taken the decision to suspend operations in both cities.

I want to reiterate that the British Council is a cultural relations organisation. Our work connects ordinary people around the world.

It is wrong to draw cultural relations and the British Council into an international political dispute.

I am bitterly disappointed that the Russian authorities have sought to limit our cultural and educational links at the very time when they can be of most value.

I want to reiterate that we operate in Russia in full accordance with international and Russian law and I am deeply grateful for the strong support of our fellow cultural organisations across Europe.

We remain committed to Russia and hope to continue to work with our one-and-a-quarter million Russian partners and customers from our Moscow office.

True Colours

By its recent actions in harassing, threatening and intimidating British Council staff in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, the Russian government has shown its true colours. This is not a government for which the ideals of friendship and cultural co-operation between nations have much or any resonance at all - rather, it is a narrow-minded, vengeful and politically-motivated clique, intent upon cynical troublemaking and the stoking of international tensions.

BBC correspondent Paul Reynolds has drawn attention to the link between the present crisis and the legal ramifications surrounding the actions of the Russian nationalist Andrei Lugovoi, who is suspected of involvement in the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in London in the autumn of 2006. Again, the Putin government's support and protection of Lugovoi points to its true nature, and should leave no one in any doubt as to what its inclinations are.

An interesting feature of the present crisis, which was obviously prepared in advance by the Russian authorities, is the flooding of British media comments boards (the Mail and Telegraph are the two leading examples at present) with anti-UK and pro-Putin messages posted by Russians posing under English-sounding names.

British Council Fights Back - V

Via BBC:

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has warned Russia that "intimidation" of British Council officials is "completely unacceptable".

The council is "deeply concerned" about its staff's safety after its employees were interviewed by security services and a director was detained by police.

Mr Miliband said the Russian ambassador in London would meet the head of the diplomatic service over the issue.

"Any intimidation or questioning of officials is completely unacceptable."

Support the Voice of Beslan

Via Maidan

Remember your very first day at school? Perhaps you remember your children’s. So do the members of the civic organization “Voice of Beslan”. They remember three days from the 1st to the 3rd of September 2004 which ended in carnage, tanks and the death of their children.

The “First Bell” is a major event for families throughout the Russian Federation. In Beslan parents and grandparents came. There were over 1100 people in the school on 1 September although the authorities there and in Moscow insisted to the world that there were 364 hostages. This was only one of many discrepancies.

“Voice of Beslan” was formed by survivors of Beslan for one purpose only: to find out the truth. How many terrorists were there and who helped them smuggle so many weapons into a school? Why were there conflicting stories as to whether the terrorists were ready to negotiate, and over their demands? Why were tanks and flamethrowers used? What provoked the chaos which took the lives of 331 people, over half of them children, given the evidence that the first explosions did not come from inside the school? They want to know why their children died.

Over the last months, the organization has been facing concentrated efforts to stifle its voice. The latest is the call by the Prosecutor to have an appeal which dates from November 2005 (!), (http://www.khpg.org.ua/en/index.php?id=1200015650 ) declared “extremist”. The letter of appeal asks the world community to help them establish what happened. The authorities’ response: an application from the Prosecutor claiming “extremism” over accusations directed against President Putin.Yes, they accuse Mr Putin of aiding and abetting terrorists. We would, however, remind the Russian Federation authorities of a much better method of fighting wrongful accusations. Prove them wrong by finding the truth. “Voice of Beslan” asks no more.

YOU CAN HELP

Please write a simple message of solidarity to “Voice of Beslan” at golosbeslana@mail.ru

Tell them that you support their efforts to learn the truth and that seeking the truth does not constitute extremism in any free country.Please also copy your letters to ourvoicescarry@gmail.com.

TOGETHER WE CAN HELP TO ENSURE THEIR VOICE IS HEARD.

Halya Coynash Yevhen Zakharov, Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group

Vyacheslav Khavrus Oleksandr Pylypenko, “Maidan” Alliance

British Council Fights Back - IV

The Telegraph's analysis of the current situation is probably quite accurate:

Britain feels confident enough to defy the order because senior officials calculate that Russia is exhausting its diplomatic capital by fighting on too many fronts.

President Vladimir Putin is confronting America, Britain and the West over a series of crucial issues: the future of Kosovo; the proposed missile defence shield; sanctions on Iran and an arms control treaty.

Instead of dividing the Western powers, Mr Putin's brand of diplomacy is uniting his opponents.

If Russia decides to shut down the British Council offices by force, perhaps by deploying riot police, a senior official said the Kremlin would make itself look "ridiculous, absurd and appalling".

Britain is gambling that Russia will confine itself to verbal protest because Britain is the largest European investor in Russia.

Put simply, Russia needs British capital and expertise to develop the oil and gas reserves which form the backbone of its economy. It makes Britain confident enough to face down Mr Putin.

British Council Fights Back - III

The BBC reports that the British Council has reopened its offices in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. In response, the corporation notes, the Russian foreign ministry has "summoned" the British ambassador.

According to Sky News, the Kremlin later said it would stop issuing visas to all new British Council staff sent to work in St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg, thus placing the Litvinenko affair once more at the centre of deteriorating British-Russian relations.

The Telegraph has more.

Relatives of Beslan victims to go on trial

From the Guardian:

A group of women whose relatives were killed in the Beslan school siege are to go on trial in Russia today after they accused President Vladimir Putin of complicity in the deaths.

The Voice of Beslan group has been charged with "extremism" over an appeal to politicians in Europe and the US which implied that Putin assisted terrorists.

The prosecution was launched under legislation introduced last year which civil rights activists warned could be used to attack critics of the Kremlin.

The UK Times newspaper also has a report here, and the Financial Times covers the item here.

The Precedent

Elena Bonner, widow of academician Andrei Sakharov, discusses the contemporary state of Russia in a recent interview published in the Weekly Standard, pointing to the correct historical analogy for what is currently taking place:

...the bigger picture in Russia saddens her deeply. Bonner believes it is a mistake to see Russia as backsliding toward the Soviet era. "This is a completely different historical point. Analogies to the Stalin era or to the 1970s do not feel real to me," she said in a telephone interview days after Putin's United Russia party won the massively rigged parliamentary elections on December 2. "I am closer to the view that there are many parallels to Germany in the 1930s. The same decrease in unemployment, economic stabilization; people are living better. Putin, like Hitler, is seen as the man who brought Russia out of chaos, raised her from her knees. It is ridiculous and embarrassing when the leaders of United Russia refer to Putin as 'the national leader.' What's a leader? The Führer. It's a carbon copy of a word that inevitably evokes certain associations."

So far, of course, Russia has no state ideology similar to Nazism; however, Bonner cautions, "there is a very strong nationalist idea, as well as the idea of Russian Orthodoxy as a state church. Authoritarianism, Orthodoxy, populism--not even focused on 'the people,' but on ethnic Russians--this formula, which is being more and more broadly adopted by the powers that be, seems to me a very frightening direction for my country. A large part of the population is unhappy about this. But when push comes to shove, even most of those people will not vote for the opposition but for Putin and United Russia, because they've been persuaded that the rise in prosperity today is the merit of Putin and United Russia."

See also: Putin's Nazi Inheritance

Chechen Poets

The Wikipedia wiki on Chechen poets already has 5 entries - more are likely to be added. The poets represented so far include Raisa Akhmatova, Abuzar Aydamirov, Musa Geshaev, Hasan Israilov and Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev.

It's to be hoped that at some stage an English-language anthology of Chechen poetry will be forthcoming from an enterprising UK or US publisher.

Poetry Now

The texts of the three lectures which constitute the parts of the ongoing StAnza (St Andrews Poetry Festival) debate on the situation of poetry and the poet in contemporary Britain can be read on the StAnza website which, I recently discovered, has a new URL. The fairly lengthy but intriguing and memorable contributions are by publishers Neil Astley and Michael Schmidt, and poet and critic George Szirtes.

An excerpt from Michael Schmidt's lecture gives something of the quality of the discussion and the often interesting international perspectives it opens up. Here he is, arguing the need for "a diverse and vigorous culture of reception", a concept which could indeed be the key to much that is puzzling and unfocused about the present day poetry scene in the UK:

W.H. Auden understood what the pressures on a writer can be when that culture of reception becomes unitary and coercive, and how it is necessary if one is to grow to make tracks. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, leaving his admirers and their over-insistent politics behind. What marks the Auden who obtained his freedom is a refusal to conform, to come down from his brilliant linguistic and cultural perch, to trim. What is a highbrow? he asks in an early piece. ‘Someone who is not passive to his experience but who tries to organise, explain and alter it, someone in fact, who tries to influence his history: a man struggling for life in the water is for the time being a highbrow. The decisive factor is a conflict between the person and his environment…’ That conflict occurs in art; it also occurs in criticism.

‘Poetry is not concerned,’ Auden says, ‘with telling people what to do, but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational and moral choice.’ Poetry is still instrumental; and that word rational is there, virtually synonymous with moral.

British Council Fights Back - II

From today's RFE/RL Newsline:

BRITAIN DETERMINED TO KEEP BRITISH COUNCIL OFFICES OPEN IN RUSSIA
A spokesman for the British Embassy in Moscow was quoted by the BBC on January 3 as saying that the British Council offices in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg will stay open despite a Russian order to close them. The spokesman said that the British Council's legal position in Russia is "rock-solid." The council plans to resume work on 14 January after the Russian New Year break. It's perplexing that the Russian government is pursuing this vendetta against the British Council, which does only good things for Russia and Russians." The dispute over the British Council is widely seen as part of the continuing row stemming from the 2006 London poisoning of former Russian security agent Aleksandr Litvinenko (see "RFE/RL Newsline," December 17 and 21, 2007, and January 2 and 3, 2008). On January 3, Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin as saying that "we have not raised the question of the British Council's office in Moscow thus far, and this is an act of goodwill." This was the first time that a Russian official made mention of the council's Moscow office in the course of the dispute. Kamynin also accused Britain of "politicizing" the issue. On January 4, the "International Herald Tribune" quoted an unnamed British Embassy official as calling Kamynin's remarks "hypocritical in the extreme." The daily also quoted Kathryn Board, who heads the council's overseas network, as saying that "if there is a law that we don't comply with, the Russian government has yet to point it out." She added that Britain is in contact with the Russian authorities to enable the offices to reopen without incident on January 14. "We still have a week or so to go and very much hope this will be seen through to a proper conclusion." PM

British Council Fights Back

The Telegraph notes that

The British Embassy in Moscow has said that it would defy a Russian order to close two offices of the British Council outside the capital.

Full Hearts

I've been watching one of the Christmas presents my daughter sent me, a remarkable set of DVDs that goes by the name of Friday Night Lights - an NBC television serial drama based on the life of a fictional small town in Texas, with a particular focus on high school football. Season One is really fine - like other serials in the genre (Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) it both pas homage to its subject matter and transcends it, becoming an analysis not only of issues that trouble Middle America, but also of the human condition itself. There may be some echoes of British director Lindsay Anderson's This Sporting Life of 1963, based on David Storey's rugby classic, but in terms of human tragicomedy and sheer epic sweep this show goes far beyond anything in that novel or movie.

Cats

You now have learned enough to see
That Cats are much like you and me
And other people whom we find
Possessed of various types of mind.
For some are sane and some are mad
And some are good and some are bad
And some are better, some are worse -
But all may be described in verse.

T.S. Eliot

A Christmas Poem

THE OXEN

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen.
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few believe
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve
“Come; see the oxen kneel

“In the lonely barton by yonder comb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

Thomas Hardy (1915)

The Future of Ingushetia - Video Available

The Jamestown Foundation has made available a 2-part video recording of the "Future of Ingushetia" conference it held late last month. Participants who can be watched and listened to as they deliver their papers and analyses include human rights worker Fatima Tlisova, Dr. Mairbek Vatchagaev, journalist Valery Dzutsev and Dr. Paul Goble. There are also screenings of some documentary film footage, including the very moving Memorial/Witness co-production on disappearances in the North Caucasus, "Missing Lives".

The streaming videos of the conference proceedings and accompanying film material can be watched here and here.

Escape from Russia

The BBC writes about the case of Andrei Sidelnikov, a Russian dissident and opposition activist who recently managed to escape from Russia, and has applied for political asylum in Britain:

Andrei Sidelnikov is the leader of "Pora", an opposition youth movement which advocates an Orange-style revolution to overthrow the government of Vladimir Putin. He said he feared for his life if he remained in Moscow.

"I am very afraid about my life in Russia. When I saw the letter from the FSB, I thought that it was the end of my story in Russia."

The Russian embassy in London told the BBC they were aware of Mr Sidelnikov's arrival in the UK, but had no specific information about his case.

A spokesman said his decision to apply for political asylum was a matter for the British authorities. The Home Office said they do not discuss the details of individual applications.

Behind the Scenes

The BBC, in a slightly disingenuous report on the latest deterioration in Russo-British relations:

The exhibition [now under threat from the Russian government], which includes works from the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and Moscow's Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, is currently in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Some of the art was taken from private collections after the 1917 revolution, leading to fears of seizure.

Gordon Brown and Vladimir Putin are scheduled to attend the show's opening.

'Academy nervous'

Former shadow arts minister Hugo Swire, who used to work for the National Gallery, told the BBC it was difficult to see what was behind the situation.

The Conservative MP, who organised an exhibition of Russian art in London during the Gorbachev era, said issues such as the Litvinenko row or the closure of British Council offices in Russia could be to blame.

"I think this is a situation that certainly the Royal Academy were nervous might happen," he said.

"I had a discussion with the then director about this very situation, and the government I don't think have been very quick to come forward to address the potential of something like this happening."

Kosovo Dreams

George Friedman takes a look at the issue of Russia and Kosovo's independence, and suggests a few - mostly scary - scenarios, such as a "light military" option:

...Putin would send a battalion or two of troops by air to Belgrade, load them onto trucks and send them toward Pristina, claiming this as Russia’s right under agreements made in 1999. Assume a squadron of Russian aircraft would be sent to Belgrade as well. A Russian naval squadron, including the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov, already is headed to the Mediterranean. Obviously, this is not a force that could impose anything on NATO. But would the Germans, for example, be prepared to open fire on these troops?

However, as Valery Dzutsev points out in the comments, for several well-founded reasons these projected scenarios are the least likely ones to arise, and Friedman ignores a much more possible outcome, though even it can't yet really be tagged as "probable".

European Cultural Institutes Support Britain Against Moscow

Reuters notes that

European cultural institutes have sent a letter to the Russian government expressing deep concern over moves against the British government's cultural arm, which is caught up in a diplomatic row between London and Moscow.

Signed by bodies such as the Goethe and Cervantes institutes, the letter said an order to the British Council to halt operations in two cities outside Moscow from
January 1 amounted to "discriminatory action".

Les Chats

Ils prennent en songeant les nobles attitudes
Des grands sphinx allongés au fond des solitudes,
Qui semblent s'endormir dans un rêve sans fin;

Leurs reins féconds sont pleins d'étincelles magiques,
Et des parcelles d'or, ainsi qu'un sable fin,
Etoilent vaguement leurs prunelles mystiques.

Charles Baudelaire

The Angel

What I really like about Dr. Stefanie Schwartz's approach to the feline world is its reflective, spiritual and meditative quality. In a few brief sentences she is able to express what it is almost impossible to say:

Words are not always necessary; in fact, they frequently get in the way. Your cat speaks volumes when s/he finds just the right moment to rub against your cheek and curl up next to you... Despite an arduous day, when your cat gazes at you and purrs, it is the gesture of an angel reminding you that, today and every day, you are worthy of being loved.

Dr. Cookie's Guide

This is by far the best book on the nature and rearing of cats that I've found. It's written by a real doctor, who genuinely understands the often strange yet tender world of the cat, and the ways in which it intersects with the world of human beings. I've learned a great deal from this wonderful book.

Disbelieving the NIE

Daniel Pipes considers that the recent publication of a declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes war against Iran more likely, and that "thus have short-sighted, small-minded, blatantly partisan intelligence bureaucrats, trying to hide unpleasant realities, helped engineer their own nightmare."

Russia joins Burma and Iran

Russia is joining Burma and Iran as one of the very few countries in the world where the British Council is not allowed to operate - now on the surrealistic pretext that the Council is a "for-profit" organization, AP reports.

Respect

On the spectacularly pro-Putin (via United Russia) North Caucasus results in the recent Russian parliamentary elections, Paul Goble writes in his blog that

While no one disputes that there was falsification there and often on an enormous scale, polls taken in the region before the vote suggest that more of it involved boosting total turnout numbers rather than increasing the share of votes going to United Russia, although that certainly happened in many places there as well.

But over the last few days, specialists on polling data and elections as well as on ethnic and political traditions in the North Caucasus have come forward to argue that the results reported across this region, however obviously absurd they were at the margins, nonetheless reflected certain underlying realities in that region ( http://www.rusk.ru/news data.php?idar=174570).

Vilayat Nokhchichö

It appears that the takeover of the Chechen independence movement by Islamist forces is now more or less complete. At chechnya-sl, Norbert Strade has posted links to recent decrees by Islamist leader Dokku Umarov:

If there is still anybody out there who doesn't believe Mr. Umarov's words from his original video message, it should now be absolutely clear that he meant what he said. Through the last two days he has issued a number of decrees (now called "omra") in his function as "Amir of the North Caucasus", in which he once again declares the establishment of a "North Caucasian Emirate" and the abolition of the ChRI and its structures.The first two decrees (establishment of the North Caucasian Emirate;introduction of "sharia" law on its territory) have been translated into English, cf. htp://www.kavkaz.org.uk/eng/content/2007/12/10/9162.shtml The following decrees are only published in Russian at this point, cf.http://www.kavkaz.org.uk/russ/content/2007/12/10/54917.shtml They include in detail:
No. 3: The establishment of "vilayat" as an administrative unit.
No. 4: The conversion of the Chechen Republic Ichkeria into "Vilayat Nohchichö".
No. 5: The integration of the other North Caucasian republics-turned vilayat into the N.C. Emirate.
No. 6: The creation of the institute of "Wali" (governor of a vilayat).
No. 7: The abolition of the institute of President of the ChRI.

Russia - A Universal Danger

Dan Rather reports on the increasing danger posed to the rest of the world by the Russian state (about 14 minutes into the show, in a segment lasting some 40 minutes). From the truly sickening scenes of violence and intimidation of civilians in a modern European capital city perpetrated by young Russian Nazis - scenes which recall historical archive footage of Kristallnacht - to the massive cyberattacks on the infrastructure and institutions of a neighbour, orchestrated by the Russian government itself, this televised report goes to the centre of a real and growing threat to global peace and security.

Estonia's Second Life - II

Inside the Virtual Embassy.

The Russian Jihadis

In Chechnya Weekly, Andrei Smirnov asks: Is the Caucasian Emirate Threat a Threat to the Western World? Excerpt:

The rebels in the Caucasus do not hide in woods or in the mountains all the time, rather, they are as other residents in Russia, they watch Russian television and read Russian newspapers. They also watch the TV program of Mikhail Leontyev, the well-known political observer who likes to repeat that the Americans sponsor terrorists in the North Caucasus. In 2003, in Chechnya, while the author of this article was talking to a Chechen field commander from the radical wing of the resistance, he admitted receiving money from international Muslim international foundations. He speculated that some Western countries were also contributing with the aim of causing more trouble for Russia. The Kremlin exploits anti-American propaganda in order to inspire xenophobia among the Russian population, and this situation affects—in turn—the feelings in the North Caucasus. The worse that Russian-American relations become, the greater are the illusions of the militants that the United States is really helping them discreetly, or at least that it might start doing so one day.

The absurdity of the rebels’ declarations lies in the fact that they declare war against the West, and at the same time beg for aid in their anti-Russian struggle. When Dokka Umarov’s video declaration of the establishment of the Caucasian Emirate was posted on the Kavkaz-Center website, the names of the countries he had called “enemies of Allah"—America, England and Israel—had been removed and replaced by the abstract phrase “enemies of Islam.”

Whatever the Caucasian rebels say, it is clear that they do not have much in common with the interests of the international Jihadi movement. For the Taliban and the Sunni militants in Iraq, the main enemy is the United Sates, while for Hamas and Islamic Jihad the main enemy is Israel. For all of them, Russia is not an enemy, while for Islamists in Russia, the main and, in fact, the only enemy is the Russian government. With the establishment of the Caucasian Emirate, one could speak of the appearance of a new phenomenon that could be described as a Russian Jihadi movement. This movement has no smaller plans than the Jihadi movement worldwide, but it nonetheless limits itself to activities inside Russia’s borders and has no ambitions to grow into an international problem.

Estonia's Second Life

Estonia has opened a Virtual Embassy on Second Life:

According to Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, more and more of communication takes place on the Internet, and Estonia must keep up with the trend. “Second Life’s popularity as an alternative environment for interaction has grown rapidly, which is why we decided to establish an embassy there,” Paet added.

Art exhibits, concerts, lectures and other events will be organised in the embassy. The first lecture, entitled “Back to the future,” will be given in January by Estonian Ambassador to Great Britain Margus Laidre.

According to Secretary General of the Foreign Ministry Matti Maasikas, several other countries are planning to open virtual embassies in Second Life, which means that the prominence of Second Life is growing in diplomatic circles. “We expect people interested in Estonia, as well as people interested in foreign relations and foreign policy, to participate in events at the embassy,” said Maasikas.

The virtual embassy has a conference room, exhibition room, reception hall and a technology room, where Estonia as an e-nation is introduced. Visitors to the Estonian embassy will hear current news read by an Estonian hound.

In honour of the 90th anniversary of the Republic of Estonia, the embassy will display the exhibit “Blue-black-white in Estonian painting”. There will also be other materials dedicated to the anniversary on display.

The embassy can be visited here (you need to have the SL client installed on your computer).

Fighting Back

After Time magazine published an article about The Death of French Culture, France's artistic elite fought back in no uncertain terms, the Telegraph writes, adding:

Indeed, France boasts such world-renowned figures as Pierre Boulez, the composer and conductor, as well as the diva Natalie Dessay who took centre stage at the opening of the Metropolitan Opera's season.

And in how many other countries would a philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy, be frequently seen holding forth on prime-time television shows?

Putin: Disassembling the Myths

At RFE/RL, Robert Coalson examines Five Myths About Russia's Elections. The article should probably be compulsory reading for those news correspondents (on BBC, Sky, CNN, etc.), who blithely refer to President Putin's "popularity", as though it were an established fact.

December 2, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- There is an "election" going on in Russia. Not an election, but an "election." This is not an election that falls short of international standards. It is not a democratic, a flawed-democratic, or even a pseudo-democratic process. According to a recent RFE/RL poll, nearly two-thirds of voting age Russians don't believe the elections will be conducted honestly. Nearly half say if they do vote, it will be out of a sense of "duty."


The Kremlin, regardless, is expending considerable effort to create the illusion of a democratic process, with the Kremlin-controlled election agencies, the Kremlin-controlled legislature, and the Kremlin-controlled media, which constantly intones the mantra that Russia is following its own democratic path, that the country has a reliable democratic system. "We don't need helpers in organizing elections like in Africa or Kosovo," a Central Election Commission member said in October. "We have an established democratic system."

Here are five myths the Kremlin's political spin machine has been working non-stop to promote.

1) President Vladimir Putin is popular. Polls consistently show Putin with a popularity rating of 60 to 70 percent. But these polls are part of an antidemocratic system, one where conformist political messages are drummed into the populace constantly while high-profile examples of the consequences of dissent -- from dispossession to exile to murder -- are frequently reinforced. No other political figures in Russia have even minimal name recognition, and even people who regularly appear on state television to sycophantically praise the leader are not known to the public by name. In Pictures: Russians Go To The Polls.

"Popularity" in Russia is something the Kremlin gives and takes away. Six days after the largely unknown Viktor Zubkov was named prime minister in September, a poll found that 40 percent of Russians thought he'd be the next president of Russia. Because Putin is the only political figure with any significant stature in Russia, he attracts personal credit for everything that happens in the country, all of which is positively spun in the state-controlled media. However, the presidential administration understands how quickly setbacks can erode even Putin's support, as it learned in 2001 when Putin was lambasted for failing to show sympathy for the trapped crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine and in 2005 when pensioners took to the streets in the thousands calling for Putin's resignation because of a controversial social-benefits reform.

Putin's popularity ratings are a bubble that exist within a political vacuum, a bubble that nonetheless needs to be continuously pumped up with injections of hot air from state television.

2) Parties matter. Putin and his team have worked hard over the last seven years to bring the political party system under control, and they have succeeded. Although there was some evidence the plan was to create a system based on two Kremlin-friendly parties, the Kremlin's commitment to that idea was never solid. Now it appears Soviet-era political impulses have taken over and the efficiency of a single-party monolith has proven too attractive.

There are 11 parties participating in the current campaign, but only one counts. Propped up by Putin and more than two-thirds of Russia's regional leaders, plus thousands of mayors and other apparatchiks, the Unified Russia party has -- as it did in 2003 -- ignored the other parties and focused entirely on using its vast financial and administrative resources to persuade a cynical public that since there is no beating them, you'd best join them.

Since its creation, it has followed the direction of the presidential administration, which in turn has not even bothered to create the impression that it takes the party's opinions into consideration. Party leaders were stunned when Putin announced unexpectedly on October 1 that he would head Unified Russia’s list of candidates for the Duma elections.

As for the other parties, some -- the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, A Just Russia, and Civic Force -- are Kremlin-controlled pseudo-opposition groups designed to muddle the situation and siphon votes away from independent organizations. The real opposition parties are financially starved groups that must spend all their resources merely in order to comply with the strict laws on forming and registering parties; that are shut out of the national media; and that are harassed, ridiculed, and parodied by Kremlin-inspired pseudo-NGOs.

3) Issues matter. The platform of Unified Russia's campaign is a collection of Putin speeches nebulously called "Putin's Plan," and it is not discussing any issues more sophisticated than the slogan "Putin's Plan Is Russia's Victory."

As it did in 2003, Unified Russia has refused to participate in campaign debates with opposition parties. Nonetheless, because of the party's domination of state-television news coverage, 8 percent of Russians in a recent poll said they remembered seeing Unified Russia members in televised debates and 69 percent of Russians who said they watched the debates thought that Unified Russia performed well in them.

Although Unified Russia has turned the elections into a referendum on Putin and his course, observers know that "Putin's course" is whatever Putin and his inner circle deem expedient at the moment.

Policy pronouncements by the minor also-rans are ridiculed at best, and as a rule ignored. In addition, because the violations of election standards by the authorities, by Unified Russia, and by bespoke “nongovernmental” outfits like the militant Nashi youth group have been so frequent and so outrageous, opposition parties spend the lion's share of their time and effort cataloging and complaining about them. There is literally no time to discuss matters such as the creeping renationalization of the economy or the systematic dismantling of civil society.

4) Election rules matter. Any party advertisement that does not include a direct, literal appeal to vote is not considered part of the campaign and is not covered by campaign or campaign-finance laws, the Central Election Commission has ruled in connection with complaints about Unified Russia flooding the country with t-shirts, notebooks, backpacks, and bottles of vodka.

On the other hand, the Federal Security Service, the KGB successor organization charged primarily with preventing terrorism, is investigating a Communist Party leaflet that contains jokes about Unified Russia and Putin. Police in cities around the country have confiscated campaign materials of the Union of Rightist Forces on pretexts ranging from the need to test them for narcotics to the need to analyze their content for signs of extremism or hidden advertising.

Opposition activists have been questioned by police in their homes and detained without cause on the streets. Garry Kasparov, head of the opposition Other Russia coalition -- which can't even participate in the elections because the Kremlin refused to register it -- spent five days in detention for participating in an unsanctioned demonstration, while six more Other Russia activists were sentenced this week to six days in jail for allegedly resisting arrest. Ivan Bolshakov, a leading Yabloko youth activist and Duma candidate from Nizhny Novgorod, was arrested on November 20 in Moscow hours after filing a complaint against Putin with the Central Election Commission on charges stemming from a demonstration he attended in May. Yabloko activist Farid Babayev was shot dead in Daghestan following his criticism of the republican administration's manipulation of the election campaign.

Unified Russia has filed 11 cases against newspapers in the city of Saratov alone, having recently won a hefty decision against one cash-strapped paper. Neither Putin nor the vast majority of the nearly 70 Category A officials (federal ministers and regional heads) running for the Duma on the Unified Russia ticket is taking administrative leave during the campaign. The governor of Novosibirsk region told journalists he can't leave his post because of upcoming events like " the celebration of the harvest, the 70th anniversary of the oblast, and the coming of winter."

5) Election results will reflect the public will. This myth is perhaps the most important from the Kremlin's point of view. Analysts in Russia and the West have argued Putin is seeking a landslide in the elections so he can -- under the cover of an apparent popular mandate -- affect some unspecified major overhaul to the state structure and/or the constitution. Those changes will likely institutionalize Putin's increasingly totalitarian political system by introducing further antidemocratic measures such as the elimination of the direct election of the president.

No one knows what those changes -- "Putin's Plan" -- will be. So no one can vote for them. But even if Russians did know what that plan is, a political system without alternatives cannot produce an endorsement of that plan. Fewer than one in five respondents in the RFE/RL poll believe the results of the vote will reflect the true will of the electorate.

The Russian legislative elections will produce a "landslide," but it will be no more meaningful than similar landslides that are produced in other controlled political systems, such as those in most Central Asian countries. Unified Russia's victory will be a victory for Putin and his circle. But it won't be anything more than that.